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A Quest for End of the Road...
Actual Ride Plan:
A Single day ride of about around 400kms covering Warangal-Ramappa Temple, Lakhnavaram Forest & Lake.
Riders:
1) Rakesh_Zmr (Black ZMR)
2) Lapiz_Lazulai (Black ZMR)
What really Happened:
As the Last weekend for me as a bachelor (wife coming back) is approaching faster like a monsoon cloud, I decided to ride out to any place or no place. I searched the maps for destinations around Hyderabad and there is only one route that is left untouched by me after I started Touring and it is Hyderabad-Warangal so I started some research for tourist spots around Warangal and I came across Ramappa Temple & Lakhnavaram Lake which are approx. 200kms away from Hyderabad which will be a ideal distance for a day’s tour. So I mapped out the route and laid out the plan put up the Ride Plan on the xBhp Hyderabad Page(FB) and xBhp offline G2G thread to see if anyone else is free to ride, after speculations and other discussions My selves and Lapiz(Sanjay) decided to go for it.
After exchanging texts on the ride plan meet up place and time we decided to start at 5.00am early so that we will have more time on our hands for exploring. The night before the ride I have taken out the G.Maps once again and am scanning around the destination curious to find if there is any other interesting place and I found out there is a Wildlife Sanctuary some 70kms from Lakhnavaram Lake.
D-Day:
As planned My selves and Sanjay met at the Meet Point then I explained him about the new place I found out and as no research is done I said we will try to cover it if all the conditions like Road, Climate an Time are in favour to us. So we set off right on time by 5.10; A very pleasant time to start any ride. Plan is to have breakfast @ Warangal which is 150kms from Hyderabad and we took a coffee break in the middle the ride till Warangal is fast and there are no events, the roads are decent and we managed to do good speeds and reached Warangal by 7.00 and took our Breakfast stop. We had a nice discussion over breakfast and headed out to the famous 1000pillar Temple
After spending some time clicking there we started our shopping for lunch as there will be no places to eat after Warangal. So we shopped for lots water biscuits packed our bags again and headed towards Ramappa Temple.
We took the ride pretty slow enjoying the landscapes on either side of the road, surprisingly a complete opposite to what I expected after reading the rainfall report in that area; everything is GREEN!!! The road is good again the surroundings pleasing with distant hills and lots of plains filled with green grass and occasional water holes, we took our first piss break at a scenic spot
clicked some pictures and started our ride, merely 20kms after that we came to a place where we couldn’t resist stopping, a lake surrounded with lush green grass we have done a bit off-road here to reach the water’s edge and stopped at this place for a good 30mins clicking away pictures and chatting about stuff.
Once again we packed our things and started moving ahead to our destination and this time we are in for a surprise, the landscape quickly changed from plains to green forest covered hills on either side of the road and both of us are loving every inch of the road and the ride speeds came further down. In the bliss of taking in all the beauty we never checked how far came finally after I checked my odometer after a long time and I realised we might have passed our destination so I stopped in a village and checked with a local guy and realised that we have overshot the place by 20kms, so we stopped in the village found an elderly guy and started asking him about the way back and also about the wild Life Sanctuary ahead and found out from him that we are 50kms away from Godavari River which is also AP/Orissa border, after discussing among ourselves we decided to go ahead rather than going back and this decision turned out to be a testing one as we don’t know what we have in the box for us!
Without anymore delay we rode ahead this time at good speeds and within no time we came to the edge of the Wild Life Sanctuary which as I expected is a really dense forest and like any other forests the road became scarily narrow making overtaking or even passing opposite vehicles is a scary affair. Adding to that the morning sun is not able to pierce through the jungle canopy and the road is dark in places we turned on our head lamps to make us visible to the oncoming traffic which is mostly trucks and busses and after a enchanting ride through the forest for nearly one hour we reached the village which is supposed to be our end stop. We enquired the locals for the road that leads to the River banks and every second guy we asked gave us different routes and distances, finally we stopped at a shop for buying more water and discussed with a guy for some 10mins to get the accurate details for where is what. As per that guys in another 25kms there is lift irrigation project in the middle of the jungle and on the river banks which is a very scenic place, even though I am in two minds as we are already 270kms from home and it is just a single days ride, Sanjay persuaded me into riding further and there is no point missing the adventure so I said ok and we started our Quest for The End of the Road!
We followed and guys direction and started riding the road is single lane and has lots of curves to it and again with lush grass lands on either side and occasional remote villages which are adding to the beauty of the landscape many times I wanted to stop for clicking but I convinced my selves that we have to reach the destination first and all the clicking can be done on the way back.
We kept riding through the narrow windy roads and kept asking every soul we came across occasionally in the vast landscape, to add to my concern every second guy is giving us a different kms we have to ride to reach there one guy said 7kms, another said 20kms a guy even said 50kms I am speculative at this point of time and we check the maps on our mobile to see if there is actually any river ahead or not, somewhat relieving is that this road is leading us to a river as per the map, I kept asking Sanjay if we should turn back and he kept convincing me even I doubted that we might have crossed the border into Orissa at some place as some of the people are finding it difficult to speak Telugu!!!
Few more kms and there we are really at the End of the Road!!! And also there is a sign board reading further ahead in the gravel path leading into the forest there is a Lift Irrigation pump in Godavari river and it is 7kms from where the road ended, so we started riding into the jungle the vehicle tracks in the gravel assured me that there is life somewhere yonder in the forest to confuse us more there are many trails leading into the forest, once in the forest after speaking to local guys I am really worried because some of them just stared at us and didn’t utter a word but just ignored us, finally a guy said us we are going in the right direction and just the gravel is turning more sandy and I have trouble keeping my bike straight even with a Sirac @ the rear. So after a couple of more kms in the forest we found a clearing and huge pipes and all, finally the project gate, we did not have any trouble entering into the premises luckily and have found a beautiful spot after crossing the project site on the river banks but on a Hill and the river is flowing nearly 50feet below the hill and there is no way we can get close to the water!! We parked our bikes on the Helipad constructed for the project site then made a camp under a lone tree and it is 1.00pm on the watch and 300kms exactly on the odometer!!!
We decided to have the lunch we brought with us there, the sun is unforgiving and the humidity is high we took a 1hr break at this place and started our ride back and it is a different experience all together....
to be continued..
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